Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 85 – Fox Hunting

Emily sighs, looking over the two corpses in the tent and the blood-splattered tarp around them.

“Well, shit! I know Oscar said they killed themselves when captured, but I didn’t think they’d be quite that decisive. Was it the gun?” she mutters to herself, biting her thumb. “I expected it to take a few resets, given I want to try and deal with as many of these mage killers as possible, but it may be harder to find them all than I’d like. Ah well, I’ll give it a few attempts and see how it goes.”

Emily starts checking the woman’s body for anything that may lead her to her accomplices. She finds several hidden blades tucked into the woman’s sleeves and strapped to her body: which turns out to be surprisingly toned, with obvious signs of rigorous training.

Inside the woman’s mouth, she finds a cracked, off-white tooth, leaking a black liquid down her throat.

Don’t give them time to grit their teeth I guess.

She doesn’t find a single item for communication, but she does find a tattoo of the an impaled skull on the inside of the woman’s left forearm.

Huh. Did they really mark their members? That should make it a whole lot easier to confirm who’s with them.

Scoffing, Emily turns away from the woman to check the man’s corpse too. She glances at the bloody hole between his eyes, grinning slightly.

Nice shot.

She pulls back the black cloak covering him, finding two arm length swords strapped at his hips. The man himself is thin, with a compact muscular frame. She finds the same tattoo on his left arm, and two items, one in each trouser pocket. The first is a small pouch of dark, ash-like powder that Emily recognises as inhibition powder, and the other is a small, glowing white crystal.

¯¯¯¯¯

[Inhibition Powder]

[Rank:] E

[Description:] A magical compound used for blocking mana circuits.

[Effect:] Inhibits the mana flow of living beings third circle and below.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Mana Detection Crystal]

[Rank:] F

[Description:] A crystal used for identifying mages and beasts.

[Effect:] Emits light and mana when within ten metres of a living being's mana signature.

_____

“I see. Did he start following me because this reacted to me? Do they have someone with one of these near each entrance? Or was he just hanging around?” Emily mutters while standing up. “It’s a shame the inhibition powder doesn’t work on fourth circle mages though.”

She sends both items into her storage and leaves the tent, looking around the street outside. Everybody nearby sends nervous glances towards her, but nobody approaches her to question the gunshot. She walks away from the bloodstained tent, disappearing into the black market.

Let’s see if anyone else reacts to my mana signature.

Emily walks the alleys, constantly checking over her shoulder for any pursuit. It doesn’t take long for her to pick up another tail. She leads them towards one of the market’s exits, moving halfway up the stairs before turning and waiting for her follower to approach. A hooded figure steps into her line of sight and Emily wastes no time, springing forward with her arm outstretched. She catches the figure by the throat and slams them into the wall.

The woman in her hands coughs, her lungs emptied by the force of the blow, and Emily mercilessly grabs her jaw, wrenching it open, breaking something in the process. The sound of the woman’s pained howl drowns out the sound of the small pouch that Emily senses falling from the woman’s hand and hitting the ground. A small dark cloud fills the tunnel for a moment, before fading away. Emily simply ignores it, letting her machina burn out the inhibition powder she inhaled before it can do anything.

The woman quickly recovers from her shock and starts reaching for something within her cloak, but Emily drives a knee into her stomach, stunning her again, before reaching into her mouth and ripping out an off-white tooth.

The woman screams in pain, fruitlessly struggling against Emily’s grip.

“Now that you can’t bite that, how about we have a little chat?” Emily says, loosening her grip on the woman’s throat slightly to let her breathe and knocking her hood off to get a clear look at her face.

The woman looks young, maybe only a year or two older than Emily, and her face is covered in freckles, her hazel eyes set in a furious glare. She has short, messy black hair, slicked back with grease. The girl closes her mouth, grunting in pain as it fails to line up properly, but says nothing while attempting to reach into her cloak again.

“I’ll tell you now, that’s not gonna work,” Emily says calmly before lashing out with the Claw on her free hand and splitting the girl’s arm open.

The girl shrieks in pain, but before Emily can question her, her eyes roll back and she suddenly falls limp.

“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue, checking the girl’s pulse and finding her dead. “What the fuck did she kill herself with?”

Emily lets go of her throat, letting her corpse slump to the ground as she looks her over. She sees her uninjured hand, the one she never tried to reach for a weapon with, firmly clasped. She pries the girl’s fingers open, but finds nothing.

“What?”

Emily’s eyes are drawn to the ring on the girl’s pointer finger. She touches the ring, running a machina scan and letting out a gasp of admiration at the mechanism within. The ring holds a small capsule of poison with a small, spring-loaded needle, activated by rotating the top layer of the ring while holding the inner, disconnected layer still.

“Fascinating. Maybe I should make something similar for healing potions? I did find it hard to use them mid-fight,” Emily mutters, adding a mental note for later.

She checks the girl's body, finding a revolver fastened in her armpit and several knives in holsters on her legs. She also has the tell-tale tattoo of the group on her arm. Just in case, Emily runs machina scans through all of the girl's clothes and jewellery, finding six other places with hidden kill switches, half of them engaged.

Damn. I can see why they struggled to capture them alive. I wouldn’t have found half of these without a machina scan, so unless you can completely immobilise these guys, they have a method to kill themselves. Maybe they have a kill-switch inside their bodies somewhere?

She stands up, turns away from the corpse, and heads back into the market. She walks around for an hour, waiting for someone to start tracking her again, but no one does.

Either they worked out something was wrong and went into hiding, or there were only three of them. Guess I’ll leave for now. At least I have something to do till I reset. Inhibition powder is described in the library, but I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere. Now that I have some, I should be able to reverse-engineer it easily enough.

Emily heads back towards the entrance she used to enter the black market.

“Not to mention the mana detection crystal. I need to test it properly to see if the mana released is strong enough to trigger an array,” she mutters under her breath as she steps into the secluded stairwell.

She walks to the top of the stairs where the same guard as earlier is sitting to the side of the door staring at her. He rises as she rounds the corner, moving to the door and undoing several latches before sliding a key into the hole and turning it while sliding a heavy metal bar out of the way. He starts pulling the door open. Out of curiosity, Emily reaches up the moment she’s within reach and taps his arm, casting stunning touch.

Lightning crackles from her fingers, running through the guard’s body and causing him to seize up. Emily ignores his slight shaking and grabs his left hand as he passes out and drops to the floor. She slides back his sleeve and finds a bare, hairy arm beneath.

“So you weren’t working for them after all,” Emily says quietly to herself.

She drops the guard and walks through the open door into the alleyway beyond.

“I used the closest exit to the tent last time, maybe the guard there works for them. That, or they lured away, killed, or paid off the guard. Ah well. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

***

Emily activates The Clock the next day, returning to the alleyway, moments before knocking on the door. She enters the secret password like before and reenters the underground chamber, heading straight for the arms dealer again. She reaches his shop without picking up a tail.

Let’s try rattling them and see if they’ll gather.

Instead of entering the shop, she walks around the rows of shops and tents for a bit. After a few minutes, she notices a cloaked figure stalking her and heads back to the arms dealer’s shop, stepping inside. Without making a noise to wake the shop owner up, she simply pulls out the Spitter and plants a shot in the top of his head. The loud gunshot fills the room, echoing out into the street.

With a sly grin, Emily holsters her gun and summons a vial into her hand. She lifts it, popping the cork and gazing at the swirling black and grey within.

“Good luck finding me now.”

Emily downs the potion before dropping the vial back into a pouch on her belt, leaving no evidence behind. The colour quickly drains from her skin and she walks to the corner of the room to wait. Her control core disables her unique energy circulation as she does, drawing in her mana to settle in her circles and letting her machina wrap the circles to conceal their presence, a trick she worked out when messing with the mana detection crystal before her reset. The crystal still had a small reaction after she drank the brew of imperception, so she worked out a method to hide from it properly, which even works without the potion.

It doesn’t take long for her prey to bite: only a minute after she drank the potion, the door is pushed open by a hooded figure. He looks around the room, quickly spotting the dead shop owner and checking for Emily, glancing at the unresponsive mana detection crystal in his hand every few seconds.

He walks around the whole shop, even taking the keys from the dead shop owner’s body and checking the back room. Emily follows him unseen, peeking under his cloak and confirming him as the man she shot in the head. After looking around and not finding her, the mage killer roughly yanks the door open in frustration and leaves the shop. Emily slips out behind him, pursuing him as he weaves between structures, never staying on a well-walked route for too long.

He reaches the white tent faster than Emily expected and moves round to the back, pulling away a hidden split in the tarp and entering. Emily walks in directly behind him, so close her breath almost warms his neck, yet completely unnoticed.

This potion’s incredible. I’m basically touching him and he doesn’t even realise I’m here.

Emily looks around the space they’ve entered. It’s narrow, with only a few metres between where they came in and a plain white tarp wall. The space expands sideways, wrapping around to form a curved corridor.

Is this a hidden compartment built into the walls of the tent? Clever.

The man walks straight up to the white wall in front of them as the flap Emily entered through swings shut. He leans in close to the fabric and presses his ear against it. After thirty seconds, he lets out a single, high-pitched whistle and waits for a response.

“Enter,” Emily hears the woman on the other side say clearly.

The man wastes no time, pushing his hands into another split in the tent and pulling it wide open. Emily once again follows him through to the main room of the tent.

“What is it?” the woman asks coldly, turning away from the tent’s entrance to fix the man with an icy glare. “It’s Vagrant’s report soon, you’re not meant to be here for another thirty minutes.”

“I lost a target in the market,” the man responds in a monotone voice.

“How did you lose a target? Did you let them out of the tracker’s range?”

“No. I followed them to the arms dealer in the southern sector. They entered the shop, shot the owner, then disappeared. I entered the shop after and looked around, there isn’t a trace of them, and the tracker didn’t respond to anything at all.”

“Goddess, you’re fucking useless,” the woman spits, dismissively waving her hand at the man as she starts turning around. “Go get Stray - she’s at post four right now - and have her take a look. At least she’s competent.”

The man nods, turning without complaint to leave the way he came in.

“Why was I given three imbeciles?” Emily hears the woman mutter, with a tired sigh, under her breath as she follows the man out.

Three imbeciles? If she’s not counting this Stray in that, I have five targets.

She follows the man again as he winds his way across the market. A few minutes after leaving the tent, though, Emily looks down and realises colour is returning to her skin.

One vial doesn’t last very long.

Unconcerned about wasting resources, she simply pulls out another vial of the brew and drinks it. Her mark never realises a thing and keeps charging onwards, leading Emily straight to his teammate.

They get close to where Emily picked up her second tail on the last reset, and the man veers into a narrow gap between the underground chamber’s wall and a small shop to the side of a stairwell to the surface.

“Why are you here, Barbarian?” a soft voice asks as a cloaked figure emerges from the shadows.

“I lost a target, so Fox sent me to you,” Barbarian answers in his signature monotone.

“You lost them? Ha, no wonder I’m Fox’s favourite. How dumb can you be?” Stray, the girl Emily killed in the stairwell, laughs in a teasing tone.

“Will you help?” he asks, ignoring her taunt.

“Tsk. You’re no fun,” Stray complains before skipping past them. “Sure, where did you lose them?”

“Arms dealer in the southern sector.”

“Oh? Where the gunshot came from?”

“That was the target.”

“Exciting!”

They leave the alley, heading back through the market towards the arms dealer. Emily watches both of the mage killers as they dodge through people in a well-practised manner with their heads on a swivel, constantly observing their surroundings. Even the playful Stray avoids being noticed to an impressive degree while maintaining her vigilance.

They’re certainly well trained. If it weren’t for this potion I definitely wouldn’t be able to follow them like this without being seen, even if they didn’t have the mana detection crystals.

They soon arrive at the shop. Both mage killers walk in, and Emily slips in behind them before the door can shut.

There are three people in the shop already, who all turn to look at the new entrants with caution.

“What do you want? We were here first,” a man filling a sack with weapons from the displays says with a cautious glare.

The mage killers both remain silent, Barbarian watching Stray as she looks around the shop, checking the floor around the door carefully.

“They’ve disturbed it too much. I won’t find anything. Return to your post,” Stray says calmly, all traces of playfulness gone from her voice as she turns to walk straight back out of the door.

Barbarian doesn’t say a word, simply following her out. Emily sticks behind Barbarian as the two part, following him back to a food stall a short distance from the entrance she used to arrive in the market. He sits down to the side of the stall without a word to the owner, who doesn’t even spare him a glance.

Well, I know where three of them will be now. It sounds like they all periodically report to Fox, so I should find the other two if I watch her.

Emily pulls The Clock from her belt and resets, returning back to enter the market again.